tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20754433896919379792024-03-18T20:52:22.263-07:00Experimental Fiction / PoetryThis is a blog of reviews, interviews, & commentary on writing that takes risks. Unsolicited work welcome. I am most interested not in evaluative pieces, but in creative pieces that explore what the reviewer learned from reading the book. Unsigned commentary is by the editor.<a name="4939242618"></a>
Copyright 2008,2009, 2010, 2011Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.comBlogger187125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-79519069807955709192012-03-16T07:05:00.000-07:002012-03-16T07:05:07.476-07:00I FINALLY GOT BACK IN<span style="font-family: inherit;">After months of trying, I finally broke back into this blog. Thank goodness! While this has been lying dormant and useless, a number of you wrote gracious comments I couldn't respond to--I didn't even know they existed. I respond to each and every one below.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Also, I have started a new blog somewhat in the spirit of this one: <a href="http://thealteredscale.blogspot.com/">Thealteredscale.blogspot.com</a>. This blog will go dormant, and I will repost some of what appears here at the new one.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is associated with my new Internet journal, <a href="http://alteredscale.com/">Altered Scale</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Altered Scale</i> contains videos by </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Purgatory Hill, led by Grammy-nominated Pat MacDonald; </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">National Book Award Winner Nathaniel Mackey; </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">an improvised piece by Charles Bernstein, U of PA Donald T. Regan Professor;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nicole Peyrafitte, performance artist and chef;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Chris Funkhouser and his group grope uSurp;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Vernon Frazer,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and the Zacc Harris Jazz Band. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">All videos, and everything else in the journal, is used with the permission of the artist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Also in the journal are </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Maria Damon—poet, scholar, U of MN Professor</span><br />
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</style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jonathan Brannen—poet & songwriter<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ann Bogle—fiction writer<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">John Colburn—fiction writer, poet, publisher<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Elizabeth Burns—author of the novel Tilt<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Terry Folz—poet<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Greg Hewett—poet & Carleton College Professor<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sun Yung Shin—Asian American Literary Award winner for poetry<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sarah Fox—poet & publisher<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nate McCay—poet & reading series curator<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mark Wallace—author of The Quarry and the Lot</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Wang Ping—poet, fiction writer, photographer, MN Book Award Winner</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oscar Sparrow—English performance poet</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Chris Funkhouser—NJIT Professor</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I am getting a little tired of typing names, so here are the rest without the little bios (no offense intended)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt;"></div><h3 align="left" id="sites-page-title-header" style="background-color: white; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; text-align: left;" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span dir="ltr" id="sites-page-title">Larissa Shmailo, Sheila E. Murphy, Grant Grays, Peter Ganick, Felino A. Soriano, Terry Folz, </span>Hoa Nguyen, Greg Hewett, Sun Yung Shin, Bruce Holsapple, Sara Brickner, Geoffrey Gatza, Jill Chan, Nate McCay, Gail Lukasik, Heather Fuller, Colin James</span></span></h3><br />
<!--EndFragment-->Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-3898842705127622011-04-13T16:14:00.000-07:002011-04-13T19:55:35.188-07:00The Meditating CougarThe meditating cougar didn't bother<br />
with the elk when it shuffled by<br />
so close and easy, so available;<br />
it did simply nothing, seeing and hearing<br />
nothing, eyes unfocused and ears<br />
not discerning, a world gone soft,<br />
soft. The meditating cougar may turn<br />
its head to look not here, to hear not<br />
there, with no wondering available,<br />
a full stomach and a mind hidden<br />
and supple, muscles thick and relaxed.<br />
An old beaver died for this meditation.<br />
Perhaps it is worth it. The day's were<br />
numbered. And now the cougar becomes<br />
so much more than its pettiness,<br />
sitting quietly beyond simple earthly<br />
wishes, doing its thing, after satiation.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-3482543592171582332011-04-03T13:29:00.000-07:002011-04-03T13:36:12.539-07:00DOUBLE OR NOTHING by Raymond Federman (published in 1971)Go <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=5UOCirUB56MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22double+or+nothing%22+%22Federman%22&source=bl&ots=UoBoRZOGyC&sig=k9tKc2-vyz0CKHn5UFBYNdFKH4s&hl=en&ei=IMWYTayLK-uD0QGZ_rT-Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false">here</a> to get a sense of what this book looks like. Since it needs to be seen to be believed, don't skip this step. <br />
<br />
The novel is a typescript in which each page is conceived of as an object and typed differently. Federman may even on occasion have used freehand ink lettering or stencils. (See page 9.) It is a classic contemporary novel, one of the landmarks of meta-fiction, where the author reflects on the making of the fiction as the book is made.<br />
<br />
The 18th-century's <i>Tristram Shandy </i>by Laurence Sterne is an early, if not the earliest metafiction, in that it spins its wheels obsessively focusing on details before the putative beginning of the story so as to almost not get there. Federman's book is similar. It follows an author getting ready to lock himself in a cheap motel room for 365 days with a typewriter, noodles, cigarettes, sugar, coffee, and a few other things in order to write the story of a character he initially calls "Boris" who comes to the U.S. from France after WW II.<br />
<br />
The book, however, only speculates about what the author will write or might write about "Boris." He never actually commits to a story, though he does spin a lot of potential story lines that are quite interesting to follow. And it spends an equal amount of time speculating about the daily needs of the author in his motel room. He even worries about how weird it will look when he carries in the dozens of toilet paper rolls he has computed that he needs.<br />
<br />
Complicating all of these (playful) complications is the fact that, if you know anything about Federman, you will realize that Boris' "biography" is remarkably similar to Federman's. Both are Jewish and from families who were massacred in the Holocaust. Both are French. Both come to America after the war.<br />
<br />
Federman, of course, also shares biographical details with the author. Most importantly, both of them write books. Both of them are also gamblers ("double or nothing"), although the reader would have no way of knowing this.<br />
<br />
This book has been written about extensively, and I will probably not contribute anything to this discussion. This post is more about my coming to terms with the book, and I welcome you to come along if you like.<br />
<br />
There are five levels of self-conscious play in this book:<br />
<br />
1. The typescript - Each page is an object unto itself. It is not simply a transparent window pointing us to the action. At times, we don't even know where we are to read next. This forces the readers to not only help to create the very page, but to encounter the pages not as media but as made. This entails that Federman's book does not stand between the reader and the story, conveying the story to the reader, but <i>is </i>story. Every page is a chapter unto itself, and we encounter it in its singularity, and come away having been at least challenged, maybe rattled, maybe laughing.<br />
<br />
2. The character of Boris - Federman refuses to make him a "character." Rather, he is the making of the making of a character. My guess is that Federman believes that fictional "characters" in novels do not resemble human beings. Rather, they are functions of the larger structures and issues at play. He chooses to make this self-consciously and explicitly clear by going no further than suggesting ways to develop Boris. In this way Boris is always at play, always at limbo, always not closed off. The way traditional novels make characters feel "real" is, paradoxically, to round them off, i.e. to close them off, rather than to leave them open, which is the human orientation toward the future. With the future closed off, literary characters are just not people at all. Boris, in all his unfinishedness, is closer to a person, even though Federman keeps reminding us that he, Federman, can make him do whatever he wants.<br />
<br />
3. The third level of self-conscious play is between Federman's biography and Boris's. Federman gives us enough teasers to make it clear that the novel is semi-autobiographical, yet at the same time he doesn't spell out the differences, except in a few hilarious places, generally when he claims he wasn't as shy as Boris. We become voyeuristically curious about Federman. What is true? What is not? He is such an interesting raconteur that I find myself much more curious about the gap between fact and nonfact in his writing than in, say, Jack Kerouac's.<br />
<br />
4. The author - The author is perhaps the most interesting character in the book. Why doesn't he sit down and just get writing? Why does he spend pages and pages itemizing how many rolls of toilet paper, boxes of noodles, tubes of toothpaste, etc. that he will need to write his book? And why does he keep rewriting the book, or going back to the beginning? Is the author supposed to be someone operating with traditional assumptions about writing but too honest to go through with them? Does he sense on a visceral level the falsity of those traditions? Is there something else that can account for his obsessiveness, both about the things of his daily needs and Boris?<br />
<br />
5. The fifth level is the most obscure. It is the play between the author and the writer, Raymond Federman. While he doesn't leave the same teasers about the similarities between him and the author as he does between himself and Boris, we nonetheless can't help but speculate. Things are not as voyeuristic because Federman does not give us enough details: This is a more abstract connection, or disconnection as the case may be. Here, the play seems most uneasy and even haunted, the obsessions are so overwhelming, the concerns so seemingly unimportant. I am not sure Federman gives us enough information to explain this obsession, other than the one I offered earlier, it is an anxiety borne of a visceral recoiling from traditional narrative. And given that traditional Western narrative led, in part, to WWII and the Holocaust, can you blame him?<br />
<br />
This book is a made object, asking us to do with it what we will, but refusing a closure that will allow any simple reading. All literature can, of course, withstand multiple readings. But not all literature intentionally creates the playful circumstances for multiple readings. What I've looked at today is one way of going at it. It offers a structure. There are undoubtedly others.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-5102979491259643022011-03-24T12:06:00.000-07:002011-03-24T14:08:55.783-07:00Excoriationsstretching the edge <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">of sometime</div><div class="MsoNormal">and drizzling down the</div><div class="MsoNormal">commuted statement —</div><div class="MsoNormal">almost anyone forgot</div><div class="MsoNormal">her exact debt</div><div class="MsoNormal">and the world slightly</div><div class="MsoNormal">crumbled on her</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">bending the given</div><div class="MsoNormal">of thin</div><div class="MsoNormal">and coming down on the</div><div class="MsoNormal">questioned core —</div><div class="MsoNormal">someone surrendered</div><div class="MsoNormal">his assigned place</div><div class="MsoNormal">and his status </div><div class="MsoNormal">ever so slightly curbed</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">crawling under the roofs</div><div class="MsoNormal">of anywhere</div><div class="MsoNormal">and dressing down the</div><div class="MsoNormal">extra ones —</div><div class="MsoNormal">strangers peeped out</div><div class="MsoNormal">of almost all</div><div class="MsoNormal">places and their lives</div><div class="MsoNormal">seemed almost cheap</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">cycloning the fence</div><div class="MsoNormal">of hazard</div><div class="MsoNormal">and wishing down</div><div class="MsoNormal">the segment of core —</div><div class="MsoNormal">a shadow whipped</div><div class="MsoNormal">out a weapon</div><div class="MsoNormal">that was a </div><div class="MsoNormal">mere shadow too</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">monkeying on the bars</div><div class="MsoNormal">of nowhere</div><div class="MsoNormal">and hoping for somewhere</div><div class="MsoNormal">to materialize just for you —</div><div class="MsoNormal">the words end here</div><div class="MsoNormal">but not the bite</div><div class="MsoNormal">the momentum</div><div class="MsoNormal">excoriations</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-89738822321282805592011-03-14T16:06:00.000-07:002011-03-14T16:06:56.543-07:00HECATE LOCHIA by Hoa Nguyen<i>I hesitate to write about this book of poems because it is in large part about a mother's bodily response to childbirth and its aftermath. "Lochia" is post-partum vaginal discharge that continues for about three to four weeks after birth. "Hecate" is goddess of motherhood, among other things. I chose to write about it because I write about almost every piece of literature that I read and like, and it is an extraordinary book. I'll do my best, but I encourage you to check it out.</i><br />
<i> </i><br />
<br />
The poems in this book address a certain knot of concerns from a number of different angles. Namely, how does the body of a particular post-partum woman encounter and participate in the degradation of the environment through pollution, war, economics, and politics?<br />
<br />
The very first poem places us right in this knot: "Up nursing then make tea / The word war is far." This fascinating couplet claims that war is far from the concerns of this nursing mother, yet her bringing the topic up proves that it's not too far. The poem ends by asking "Why try / to revive the lyric". The book then answers this question: to get this female knot of concerns into the tradition of the lyric.<br />
<br />
Four poems from the book can be found <a href="http://www.hotwhiskeypress.com/pusa.html">here</a>. "Thinking of Bernadette" (I assume Bernadette refers to poet Bernadette Meyers) opens with personal economic concerns. The poem asserts a nostalgia for the gold standard and bartering, and the first stanza ends with a comparison between money and a winding creek. Apparently, the poet feels insecure about money, that it's convertible and not stable. Her broken, hesitating, staccato lines magnify this issue. In this particular poem, her characteristic poetic style asks us to read the offhand ("thinking of Bernadette," "Ate ginger miso") with the crucial.<br />
<br />
In "Pusa" Nguyen pulls together a wild variety of subject matter in just 12 lines. The poem is filled with phrases and clauses that do not connect to other parts of language. There's a kind of offbeat stumbling in her poetry that is, I think, akin to Thelonius Monk's music. How does she hold it together? I think the answer is primarily rhythm. You have to hear it, but when you do the poems move in an almost inevitable fashion. Anything can be in these poems, right next to anything else, because her style invites them in.<br />
<br />
For more on this book see Stephen H. Sohn's <a href="http://gentlyread.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/effective-instability-stephen-h-sohn-on-hoa-nguyens-hecate-lochia/">"Effective Instability."</a> His review does a fine job of focusing more particularly on specific themes than I do. I am more concerned with form.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-68515027441976670282011-03-10T18:41:00.000-08:002011-03-10T18:41:16.507-08:00What is There to Write?I haven't blogged in a number of days because I didn't know how to approach a pressing topic: how do you talk about literature during times of political crisis? Does it make sense to do so? Is it obscene to do so?<br />
<br />
Clearly, parts of the world are in political crisis. And, just as the late-60's became a time for protests throughout the world, we might be seeing the beginning of something similar now. This may be quite a decade we will live through. The Arab protests are one indication. The protests in Madison are another. People of all ages are proving their willingness to march, to stand up and be counted.<br />
<br />
It's true that the phenomenon is not happening only among progressives. The Tea Party movement has proven it's appeal: the last election could be seen as a mandate for their calls for smaller government, fewer taxes, and so on. The degree to which it may also appeal to xenophobia is troubling.<br />
<br />
My point seems to be that we stand at a political crossroad. Will the moderates and swing voters see the Republican party for what it is, namely, the political wing of the upper classes? Will their anger and frustration be captured by the Tea Party? Apparently, a teacher in Wisconsin voted for Walker in the last election and now felt "betrayed." My sense is that she had a distorted view of the Republican party.<br />
<br />
Now things are clarified. The fake phone call in which Governor Walker thought he was talking to a corporate leader proved it. (The ethics of the phone call having taken place I will leave aside.) He admitted to using a "budget crisis" as a pretext for union busting.<br />
<br />
What's the alternative? As many have pointed out, the Democratic party has become a wing of the business party as well. They are just a kinder, gentler wing. And this makes all the difference. As the parent of a severely disabled child, I feel directly the difference between Republican and Democratic lawmakers. When the Republicans took over the Minnesota assembly a few years ago a representative was quoted in the paper as saying that we should not be funding every charity case in the state.<br />
<br />
By "charity case," he was, of course, referring in part to children like my daughter. The monthly amount we had to pay to keep her in a group home doubled.<br />
<br />
Now, the democratic governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, wants to severely cut services to the disabled. If passed by the Republican assembly, his cuts will be draconian. Perhaps, as some have said, the Democrats are the political wing of the business class, only they use a kinder, gentler rhetoric in order to do the same thing as the Republicans.<br />
<br />
My sense is not that the corporate interests are completely consolidating power. It's true that those sectors of the culture that oppose it — intellectuals, unions, the Democratic party (sometimes) — have weakened markedly. But they have not gone away.<br />
<br />
Let's hope that the protests in Madison are not an isolated final flicker before the corporate state takes over. I hope that power in America waxes and wanes, and that there will be a pendulum shift that will allow the country to once again become a more compassionate, progressive place.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-40929422722281563762011-02-27T15:36:00.000-08:002011-03-01T04:35:31.612-08:00"The Discursive Situation of Poetry" by Robert ArchambeauIn this essay, "The Discursive Situation of Poetry"in <i>The Monkey and The Wrench,</i> edited by Bissinger and Gallaher, Robert Archambeau comes to the somewhat startling conclusion that "historically, the conditions under which poetry becomes widely popular are not conditions we should seek out." The two conditions Archambeau identifies are Victorianism and the expression of oppressed peoples toward their government.<br />
<br />
In the former case, Victorians used poetry as a sort of moral guide. With an insecure rising middle class who needed instruction on the values and expectations of people of stature, poetry played an invaluable role. Perhaps Tennyson is the perfect example of this poet.<br />
<br />
As far as the latter condition goes, Archambeau goes into little detail other than to reference the Celtic Revival in Ireland. However, it is not difficult for us to extrapolate. In many movements for liberation, from China to Africa, poetry has played various roles in the fight for human dignity, from agit-prop to the creation of counter-traditions such as the Francophone Négritude poets.<br />
<br />
How does Archambeau see poetry working within U.S. culture at the present time? Primarily as academically credentialed professors writing for others with such credentials. He views this as a rather dry and less colorful extension of Bohemia artistry, where the market could not handle all the art being produced so groups of artists began to produce it for themselves.<br />
<br />
How might this situation change? Archambeau seems particularly skeptical about boosterism and publicity. Instead, we need to look at wider social/historical forces impinging on the academy. And the most important one right now is "the encroachment of market values on the previously semi-autonomous academic system." (He takes this idea from Frank Donoghue.) The humanities may be the least well placed educational arenas to defend their utilitarian benefit.<br />
<br />
Archambeau says that these changes will bring about a new historical condition for poetry, and we can hardly predict the form it will take. He also seems pessimistic about our ability to direct this movement in any significant manner. (I personally do not want to see poetry lose its foothold in the universities and colleges.)<br />
<br />
This provocative article seems convincing on a number of levels. Of course we would not want to live in a society as cruel as Victorian England or as repressive as those suffering under a dictator or one party rule. Having poetry being popular is too big a cost to pay.<br />
<br />
But I wonder at the dichotomy that Archambeau sets up:<br />
poetry in a free society is unpopular as poetry in an unfree society is popular. <br />
<br />
I profoundly disagree with Archambeau. Poetry is hardly unpopular in the U.S. today. The form of poetry that involves sophisticated words placed on a page, usually with line breaks, to be read quietly alone or to a quiet crowd, that form of poetry is not popular.<br />
<br />
But song lyrics are wildly popular. And they are poetry: "lyric" poetry and song "lyrics" come from the same root. The fact that there are a lot of bad pop, rock, rap, country, and blues lyrics does not mean the poetry is bad. Any type of poetry needs to be judged by its finest examples. And there can be no doubt that some of the finest lyrics today serve as good performance poetry. This argument is not even out of the mainstream. <i>The Anthology of Rap</i> recently came out with Henry Louis Gates giving his imprimatur in the form of an afterword.<br />
<br />
So the issue is not that we have stopped liking poetry. We have just stopped liking the type of poetry that is read silently or unaccompanied. Why is that? One is because technology has allowed us to. We now have stereos to play the lyrics accompanied by the spectacle of song. In Bryon's day, would his poetry have been sung over synthesizers, beats, and guitars if recording were available? <br />
<br />
Old technologies rarely leave when new ones arrive. They just adapt. Wagon rides, after the advent of tractors and cars, switched from a simple necessity to a special celebratory activity, usually during the winter. Scrolls also are still around, centuries after Gutenberg, but they serve an ornamental rather than a utilitarian purpose. Newspapers will still be around for years, in spite of the internet.<br />
<br />
What poetry represents, then, is a backwater technology, a nostalgia. The question becomes, if we feel compelled to write poetry, what can we do with this nostalgia? And here is where things get interesting. We could give in to just using it as tradition and allowing the nostalgia to completely overcome us, to become the poetic equivalent of gleeful wagon rides. Or, because poetry is nostalgia, it is not tethered to markets, nor is much expected of it, allowing it to become a sort of free-floating entity if we develop it in that direction,<br />
<br />
This, then, becomes a paradoxical argument for experimental poetry, saying that its very nostalgic uselessness is what gives it its most power. What is this power? Here I come back to Archambeau. It is a Bohemian power where people who have, for whatever reason (academia, friends, curiosity, having come across a book in a bookstore or a poem on the internet), been drawn to this free-floating nostalgia and accept its marginalization, while at the same time taking the writing quite seriously.Why take it seriously? Because it is freeing to write and to read. It loosens assumptions and causes beliefs to dance before our eyes, making us ask if we want to continue believing them.<br />
<br />
So people have not drifted away from poetry. The means of production simply allow it to be delivered in a more spectacular manner. This causes the marginalization of what we have traditionally termed poetry, words sitting on the page to be read quietly. This marginalization creates a kind of nostalgia to be associated with this poetry that can free poets from most any tethers when it comes to writing, thereby allowing them to experiment freely.<br />
<br />
One word of caution: how do you convince a politician or academic administrator to fund difficult, exploratory poetry that few people read?Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-60748162092779318792011-02-24T18:45:00.001-08:002011-02-24T18:45:49.315-08:00The Main Media Outletswhile the main media outlets<br />
looked around and went<br />
beserk <br />
we talked our way through<br />
a night of funky smells<br />
and yellow sounds<br />
<br />
a green and red<br />
texture holding us this <br />
morning, warp and woof,<br />
even in the flesh <br />
where there is no going<br />
elsewhere, just forgettingJeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-48202128467872945592011-02-22T18:49:00.000-08:002011-02-23T15:06:40.396-08:00CHRONOLOGY OF WATER by Lidia YuknavitchThe central metaphors in this book concern swimming and water: swimming in lakes, rivers, quarries, pools. Swimming for fun, to win, just to stay alive. And water sometimes comforts the body and sometimes threatens it, can lead to ecstasy and to profound degeneration.<br />
<br />
"You can tell a lot about a person from seeing them in the water. Some people freak out and spaz their way around like giant insects, others slide in like seals, turn over, dive down, effortlessly. Some people kind of tread water with big goofy smiles, others look slightly broken-armed and broken-legged or as if they are in some kind of serious pain." (99)<br />
<br />
You can tell a lot about Lidia when you realize that, based on what she says in other parts of the book, she probably finds all these swimmers beautiful.<br />
<br />
The book tracks Lidia as far underwater — in the bad way — as a person can go. Then it tracks her surfacing.<br />
<br />
To say more would be to give away too many details.<br />
<br />
www.hawthornebooks.com<br />
www.amazon.com<br />
www.powells.comJeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-73310834409298816492011-02-18T07:12:00.000-08:002011-02-21T19:46:21.703-08:00BURN YOUR BELONGINGS (Jaded Ibis Press) by David HoenigmanFirst, a word about the publisher. Debra Di Blasi's new publishing adventure, Jaded Ibis Press, combines visual, textual, and musical art in each of its books. In addition, the press makes four different versions of each of its books: an ebook form, a black and white form, a colored form, and a fine-art form. The colored and fine art go for $49 and $8500 respectively. For this review, I read an ebook copy. The song that accompanies the book can be found on the press's web page. The art work appears in a column on the far right or far left of each page. They are by Yosutoshi Yoshida. First, I will discuss the writing, then go into the ways the artwork and sound contribute to it.<br />
<br />
Hoenigman's book is obsessive on a number of levels: The concerns of the characters are obsessive. They are part of a highly dramatic and anxiety ridden love triangle. On another level obsessive groups of images return again and again: trains, umbrellas, rain, insomnia. On a third level is Hoenigman's determination to work this love triangle through about 200 single page, dramatic monologue variations.<br />
<br />
And these variations are singular. I've never read anything like them. Their attention to bare concrete emotion and imagery, together with the use of pronouns with no clear antecedents, creates, paradoxically, a rather abstract reading experience. For me, I couldn't tell who was speaking in a given monologue, other than that it was one of the two men in the triangle. A close read is repaid by an experience of the intensity and destructiveness of romantic love at a fever pitch, not by a clear sense of what is "going on" between the characters in any conventional way.:<br />
<br />
"I barely know her, someone left her on my doorstep. she appears out of thin air if I say her name. I introduce them. she only speaks when spoken to. always some distraction grabs him by the wrist. leads him to futility. grayness. wedges itself between us. I've never seen her here before. has yet to develop the grace of the others. or is she trying to deceive me. I kissed her bare shoulder. considered returning again alone. he's grown smaller and smaller. it's been months since that morning. the threatening little tremors. soon it''ll be over. a perfect opportunity for her to showcase her newly found distrust. for him to take offense. bite his tongue and await the unavoidable. downward so sharply that his ears pop. it must be warm and cozy there. I alone notice how it changes night to night ..." (101)<br />
<br />
In this quotation we begin with the metaphor about being left on the doorway. While tired, it nonetheless works for me. The momentum created by this book allows for such tired constructions. It points to the arbitrariness of their love and, in this instance, "his" patronizing feeling toward her. But this will change. All feelings in this book are subject to radical and instantaneous change. The suggestions that she is a child continue: she only speaks when spoken to. Suddenly, we switch to the other "him" in the love triangle. What we don't get here is what we don't get throughout the book: explanations at the first or second level of abstraction which indicate how the characters are specifically related. Instead, we get these truncated, popping sentences that follow the contours of thought and feeling so closely we never come up for air. It is an extreme approach.<br />
<br />
On my ebook, the accompanying pictures are brightly colored and usually depict cityscapes or landscapes out in the country. In addition, many depict what I can only call surrealist scenes. Disparate items are placed side by side. Collages or collage-like works contain objects in two different dimensions, such as a head too small for the body. In general, the art by Yasutoshi Yoshida seems to reflect and refract the way the text draws little distinction between "reality" and "fantasy." In this book, a fantasy has as much power, if not more, in shaping perception as simple facts do.<br />
<br />
Finally, the song on the website, also by Yoshida, begins with an acoustic piano and a recitation of a part of the book. Then there is crashing noise. I won't spoil the end for you.<br />
<br />
This book presents a field of perception defined by fantasy, obsessiveness, and, because of the pronouns without antecedents, a lack of clarity when it comes to fact. The music, text, and pictures combine to form an unsettling, relentless investigation into some of the least explored and most feared aspects of the perceptual and emotive world. It is a courageous book.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-37829836295380344272011-02-13T13:23:00.000-08:002011-02-15T08:45:22.443-08:00Interview with Bruce Holsapple<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAdFR6EMd4b9UeyV6pB_Iy5JJ4tiEwBiTEPkCy75rKMV7CEkH5cBlpEx69u94I4dzfY_DtkXA22DXrzUxB2gQaNGpAUDmlZo2tD8t67cmbUQUbNorXRPz-CLyUZ7TIFXyFgAhru0DOc86T/s1600/DSCF0016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAdFR6EMd4b9UeyV6pB_Iy5JJ4tiEwBiTEPkCy75rKMV7CEkH5cBlpEx69u94I4dzfY_DtkXA22DXrzUxB2gQaNGpAUDmlZo2tD8t67cmbUQUbNorXRPz-CLyUZ7TIFXyFgAhru0DOc86T/s320/DSCF0016.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Poet Bruce Holsapple's latest book, <i>Vanishing Act</i>, (soon to be available from Small Press Distribution and currently available at <a href="http://www.laalamedapress.com/">La Alameda Press</a>) contains the wit, irony, and attention to detail we have come to expect from him. The first half of the interview involves general questions about the book. It ends with a short discussion of Bruce's recording company, Vox Audio ( PO Box 594 Magdalena NM 87825), which puts out cd recordings of poets reading their work.<br />
<br />
The second half of the interview focuses on a specific poem, namely, the first one in <i>Vanishing Act</i>, "title?." I will let Bruce introduce himself his own way, but I should say that he and I knew each other when we were both students at SUNY-Buffalo in the late 80's and early 90's.<br />
<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Could you give us a few biographical markers that will help us better understand you as a writer?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I grew up in rural Maine in the 1950s, edited a small press in Portland, Maine in the 70s, then wandered off (Washington, Vermont, Texas, New York), working a proverbial variety of jobs, before finding my way into central New Mexico, where I now work as a Speech-Language Pathologist. As you know (because we met there), I earned a Ph.D. in English at SUNY Buffalo in 1991, studying with Robert Creeley, Joseph Conte and Charles Bernstein. I taught briefly at New Mexico Tech and UTPB in Odessa, Texas. I’ve got six books of poetry in print, <i>Air-Rose </i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(1973)<i>, Total Eclipse </i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(1977)<i>, Sweet Nothings </i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(1984)<i>, Tourist </i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(1994)<i>, Observations </i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(1994)<i>,</i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> and now <i>Vanishing Act</i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, plus a couple new books in manuscript. An essay on Philip Whalen recently appeared in <i>Paideuma,</i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> and one on the verse line in William Carlos Williams appeared last fall in a special edition of <i>English Studies in Canada</i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. I’m working on a book on Williams.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>The title, "Vanishing Act," I find myself quite drawn to. Why did you choose it?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Well, because it works several ways, like in the ironic sense of all of us vanishing, being erased at various speeds—not an act at all, really—& there’s a lot of recognizing that limitation in the book, but also as a kind of self-parody, with the speaker as some dopey magician doing vanishing acts, presto! Or my vanishing into New Mexico; I live out in the country, no phone service, etc. But more importantly the sense of becoming “indivisible,” seeing <i>thru</i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> yourself, becoming “the view looking.” I mean, there’s a great concern with subjectivity, lyric voice.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Most of the poems are in the first person singular. It seems to be a version of your self, or your self in the making, that you refer to. Am I correct? When you use the 2nd person "you," you seem to be addressing yourself. Could you tell us what lies behind your choices concerning voice?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The poems are basically lyric, & concerned with voice, but as I say, the lyric subject is more or less under watch, tho who is watching is up for grabs. As you say, whatever we are, we’re in the process of remaking ourselves, & the poems involve self-transformation. The pronouns do drift off-base, shift in reference, as perspectives shift. I think of self as dialogic, emerging from an outside conversation we learn to engage, “oneself as other,” as Ricoeur puts it (& of course Rimbaud before him). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Vox Audio — You seem to be making an effort to get on record NM poets who might otherwise be lost. Is this accurate? I am wondering what you think of the notion of the "minor" poet as a positive marker. What can a minor poet accomplish that the major ones, in the Norton anthologies, cannot?</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Vox has two missions. One is to preserve poets reading who wouldn’t otherwise get recorded, like Gene Frumkin or Jim Bishop, and two, to build community. The physical facts of voice are instrumental to how the poems mean, so important to the poetry community. I don’t think of major and minor, but I do think in terms of cultural change, poetry’s work, and of the people I actually know— who’s in front of me; that’s what’s local,. But the Vox project extends from Maine (Wright, Wilde, Sharkey), thru Buffalo (Sylvester, Clarke), Toronto (Boughn), Indiana (Kalamaras), Texas (Huffstickler, Bird, Welsh), into New Mexico (Higgins, Tarn, Rodney, Moore, Goodell, Tritica, etc.), where I live. </span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> <u>Title?</u></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">You clutch too much, friend</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">try too hard, like there were a pose </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">you could freeze into place</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">& it would be there for you</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">a point of reference,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Me & What I Believe</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">you feel like falling in love</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">you feel like mourning the loss</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">all this melting snow</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">endless rehearsals</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">a slippery dance floor</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">You try figure, arrange, classify</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">like you could capture events</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">make the connections</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">a 3 ring circus & you the master of ceremonies</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">you pull out the plastic</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">“Customer Service. This is Angie</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Can I help you?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">My favorite color is beige</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">My favorite turtle is soup</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">She talks math, loves algebraic expressions</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Substitute zero for x & solve for y</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It’s the economy, stupid</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">your credit is stretched</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">What pain that attachment brings!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">another force inside</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">speaking thru you </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">using your voice </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">locked sick feet speed</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">pray read frog stop</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">you want to go away & not care</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It’s the passion I feel</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">what she engenders</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">causes me such loss</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">What I feel for you</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">What you produce</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">a boost into the air</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">no forwarding address</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">bee gift crowd stew </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">owl boy involve</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">skid flip call crash</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Won’t somebody make contact?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the ice is closing in</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I’ve broken to new depths!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">short green leaf</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">short eye grass</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">shot glass</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">fall short</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">near high</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">go between</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">impossible gap</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It’s hopeless</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">nobody likes you</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">you need to cut your throat</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">snow fire spoken star</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">mobile tire goal </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Dear X: You’ll know I’m invested </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">by how rigid I get. If we met </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I’d pose, tell a joke, etc. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I’m not so much making claims</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">as paying off deficits</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I want to see those connections</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">how the tree lights up</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">a locus of identity</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">something reflected back</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">not exactly “I want”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">but “therefore”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">this forgetting dust</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">this insistent sand</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">this abandon</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">these babies born every day</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">in every city</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">proliferating what?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Mothers</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">death</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">dharma</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">diapers</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">new shoes</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">that’s exactly what I want:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">to keep walking</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>1. In this poem the "pronouns," as you call them, switch around a bit. You go from addressing a "you" to a first person stance.</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Okay, can I give some of the background? We regulate behavior by self-talk, private speech, as with commands like “be brave” or say with scolding our “self,” and there’s extensive use of self-talk in the book. But speech is communal. There’s not much distance from the imperative “be brave” to second person “you,” hence addressing oneself as other. In this instance, there’s an emotional shift, right? A sense of exasperation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>2. In several places you simply list words: "locked sick feet speed / pray read frog stop," and later "Mothers / death / dharma / diapers / new shoes." This seems to me a quite original technique, and it appears throughout the book. What is it's function?</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Well, there are models in Whalen and Duncan, but hey, wait a minute—you use word lists too! Is this a trick question? Yes, I use word lists in fairly systematic ways, mostly as a structural device to keep the notes bouncing, up in the air. Sometimes it’s a flat surface, sometimes like scratchy noise, sometimes for transitions, sometimes just elliptical speech.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>3. The first stanza seems to be held together, in a tightly wound manner, by rhyme, off-rhyme, and assonance. </b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Hopefully the sound values ring thru-out, and the rhythm, and voice. Word lists are often knitted into the text by sound contrasts. Sound values are key.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>4. I love the sly humor: "My favorite turtle is soup," for example.</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Thanks, I’m told the humor is pretty dry! The book is about conflict, impasse, developing flexibility, transformation. Self-deprecation—or getting distance from oneself (learned from Whalen)— was an important way to unlock from cherished thoughts.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>5. The poem seems to shift focus each stanza, although remain united under a certain set of concerns: effort, attachment, loss, passing thoughts. Do you see it this way?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Yes, a trajectory gets established & you’re off to the races, one word to the next, as far as “it” takes you. Go with the Force, Luke! Lots of jumping about, drifting off topic, shifting perspective, feints, various forms of address, rhetorical ploys, who knows where you’ll land. Hopefully on your “feet.” That’s exactly right. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>6. Anything you would like to add? </b></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">It’s physically a beautiful book, thanks to Estelle Roberge’s cover painting, and Jeff Bryan’s design. We kept the price low so people would take a chance</span>.<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span></div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-47614570090616696822011-02-11T07:56:00.000-08:002011-02-11T07:56:21.332-08:00The Heart (as muscle) and PoetrySee a recent entry in <a href="http://webmail.c.earthlink.net/wam/msg.jsp?msgid=29782&folder=INBOX&isSeen=true&x=-280137381">Trancepoetics</a> by Kistin Prevellet to learn about some fascinating research some German scientists did on the effect of poetry on the heart, and the effect of the heart on the rest of the body, including the brain.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-55394368455283532552011-02-10T19:52:00.000-08:002011-02-11T15:21:13.574-08:00Jaded Ibis PublicationsDebra Di Blasi has started an ambitious publishing venture that combines visual art, music, (and sometimes other artforms), and literature in multiple and complex ways. In addition, revenues will be shared with both writers and charities in unique ways. Things are so unusual, that even <i>Forbes</i> magazine took notice. Links to the press catalog and the interview are below.<br />
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<a href="http://www.scribd.com/full/46755514?access_key=key-rngplyqij57wnvt9ndi">New Jaded Ibis catalog</a><br />
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<a href="http://blogs.forbes.com/michaelhumphrey/2011/02/11/the-21st-century-novel-jaded-ibis-sees-a-mashup/">Forbes Interview</a>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-10339508239900603832011-02-10T19:31:00.000-08:002011-02-10T19:40:45.599-08:00David Mitchell's CLOUD ATLASDavid Mitchell's 2004 novel <i>Cloud Atlas </i>is on a lot of people's lists as one of the best innovative novels of the last decade, and for good reason. So far in my read it is symphonic in its structure and reach, virtuosic in its command of style and texture, and a fantastic, fast read all in one.<br />
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The book is divided into six very distinct narratives, taking place decades and even centuries apart, with different plots and characters in each. Five of the six narratives appear twice. If the narratives are represented by letters, they go as follows — a,b,c,d,e,f,e,d,c,b,a.<br />
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Right now, I have completed the first three narratives, a,b, and c. a is entitled "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing." It concerns a man who begged his way on board a Dutch ship as it went east across the Pacific to San Francisco in the1830's.<br />
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This is an example of a few typical sentences: "Torgny the Swede knocked on my coffin (i.e. cabin) door. Surprized and intrigued by his fertive manner, I bade him enter. He seated himself upon a 'pyramid' of hawser and whispered that he bore a proposal from a ring of shipmates. 'Tell us where the best veins are, the secret ones you locals are keeping for yourselves. Me 'n' my fellows'll do the pack work. You'll just sit pretty and we'll cut you in a tenth share."<br />
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Torgny was referring to California mining fields, which he assumed Ewing was aware of. What's of interest in this passage is the pompous and melodramatic word choices: "bade" rather than "asked." "pyramid" instead of "pile." "Whispered" instead of "spoke quietly." "Ring" instead of "group." In this little paragraph we learn a lot about Ewing and, since he is the narrator, a lot about the narrative as well. It is pompous, overblown, and not particularly observant. Why should Ewing trust Torgny?<br />
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The next section is also in first person. It is entitled "Letters From Zedelghem" and is set in Belgium in the early 1930's. A young musician and composer, Robert Frobisher, is serving as an aid to Ayrs, a great, but elderly musician. Together, the two of them begin to excite the music world once again. Frobisher's writing is tighter, more direct, often leaves out the assumed subject, and is cynical and skeptical. In other words, miles from that of Ewing.<br />
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"Cause for minor celebrations. Two days ago. Ayrs and I completed our first collaboration, a short tone poem, "Der Todtenvogel." When I unearthed the piece, it was a tame arrangement of an old Teutonic anthem, left high and very dry by Ayrs's retreating eyesight. Our new version is an intriguing animal. It borrows resonances form Wagner's <i>Ring</i>, then disintegrates the theme into a Stravinskyesque nightmare policed by Sibelian wraiths. Horrible, delectable, wish you could hear it. Ends in a flute solo, no flutterbying flautism this, but the death-bird of the title, cursing the first-born and last-born alike."<br />
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All of Frobisher's writings are letters to his friend Sixsmith. We may question his behavior: he apparently sends over a valuable book he had no right to to Frobisher so that he could have some money. Frobisher's sense of himself is quite high. He punches out verbs with no subjects, banging away at the idea that he had perhaps more to do with the creation of these pieces than he is given credit for. It's a fascinating juxtaposition -- the dry, worldly Frobisher versus the foolish, melodramatic Ewing.<br />
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There is one explicit connection between the two. While in Belgium, Frobisher comes across a copy of Ewing's diary and reads it. Other than that the connection is nebulous.<br />
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Not so with the next narrative, "Half-Lives: The First Luis Rey Mystery." Here, the Sixsmith of the previous narrative is in his 60's, it is now the 1970's, and he is a scientist working for an energy company building nuclear power plants. He has found out compromising information, and they may want to kill him for it. The 39 pieces tend to be straightforward, third-person vignettes told from the perspective of more or less one character. They are a page-turning mystery.<br />
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I don't want to go into it any deep other than to say it's a genre piece: it is a mystery, filled with the sort of clichéd talk and clichéd characters you might expect there. What rescues it? Well, that it is in the middle of a novel with such interesting stuff going on around it. I am not yet sure why it is here and what it is doing. But it was fun to read. More later as I move through this important work.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-76753622943429686832011-02-06T12:46:00.000-08:002011-02-06T12:46:39.722-08:005 Short Poems<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black;"><i>exhaustion marks </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>the beginning of thinking, </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>not the end:</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>what of the sentence</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black;"><i>that lingers and languors</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>picking up </i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>whatever hangs around</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>until it means itself</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>and opposites too</i></span><u></u></div> <br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>and then the misstepping</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>dancer fakes it</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>just right</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>very few catch it</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>and those that do</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>admire her</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>for it</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>before the wish</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>before the thought</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>before the wild</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>and the tamed</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>there is the wave</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>the rhythm</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>the pulse</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>to ride</i></div> <i></i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>to be bare and lost</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>to stand before the blankness</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>to wonder into a void</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>to stand with no feet</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>to breathe with no lungs</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>to hear with no ears</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>to smell with no nose</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>to touch with no skin —</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>fear and possibility </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>scent-encing my way</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>across a prairie</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>hoping to find</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>the lit house</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i>it could be</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>around the bend</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>straight forward</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>but I don't know</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>what is a bend</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>or what is straight</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span> </span>just now</i></div> <i><br />
</i>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-65557159021467113752011-01-30T08:14:00.000-08:002011-01-30T19:50:03.617-08:00LANDSCAPE PAINTED WITH TEA by Milorad PavicI simply couldn't get my hands around this complex, dense, ambitious, playful 1988 novel (translated 1990). So, I decided to look at what some critics and reviewers had to say. Well, I dug into some databases and couldn't get beyond any simple reviews. However, it was interesting that the reviewers didn't all agree on what happens at the end of the book, at what the solution to the crossword, at the center of the book, is.<br />
<br />
The story centers around Atanas Svilar and his second wife, Vitacha Razin. A brilliant but failed architect, Svilar searches for where his father was killed in WWII. He finds out he was betrayed in a monastery. While there Svilar also learns that he is not fated to be an architect.<br />
<br />
At this point, the book becomes a crossword. The reader can choose to read it across -- straight through in a conventional manner -- or down.<br />
<br />
In this section Atanas leaves his wife and children for his first love, Vitacha Razin, and they put down roots in California where Svilar changes his name to Razin and makes millions of dollars selling a toxic defoliant to the government.<br />
<br />
What characterizes his prose more than anything else is his magical, agrarian images supporting stories loaded with digressions. One of the most fascinating digressions concerns the monk who actually turned in his father. He frequently wears his clothes backwards.<br />
<br />
There is one critical article on this book that I came across. It is by Jasmina Mihalovic and entitled "Landscape Painted With Teas as an Ecological Novel." It is fascinating the way the article sees this book as a call away from alienation and back to "the art of living." It sees the book as cautiously optimistic, I think it would be safe to say, even if it is a highly stylized Satan, in this topsy-turvy world, who ends up as Savior.<br />
<br />
"The picture in <i>Landscape Painted with Tea </i>of the upside down world of historical and perverted reality is the reflection of our own selves. The cathartic power of the book as a mirror should prevent the headlong plunge into nothingness and should return to the world its lost essence and internal balance." (The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1988)<br />
<br />
It's interesting that this apparently Slavic author of this article believes in such things as "internal balance." It would seem to be the furthest thing from what a Postmodernist would believe. Pavic collage and montage techniques are both Modernist and Postmodernist, but I don't know if his ultimate sensibility is. In an interview with Thanassis Lallas, Pavic describes himself as "always trying to act as an ancient epic poet...To me the best literature is oral...To understand how someboy writes a novel, you must feel the breath of the book." (Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1988)<br />
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Could it be translation difficulties that are bringing these seeming incongruities up? I don't think so. Here I point out Pavic's imagery, something that is easy to translate. Yes, it is often magical, but the magical elements are made up of agrarian elements. There is a nostalgia in Pavic's writing, that is sometimes explicitly stated. It's not naive. It's not conservative. It feels as if we need to get back to our own, specific, historical moment when reading him.<br />
<br />
I'll repeat that:<br />
<br />
It feels as if we need to get back to our own, specific, historical moment when reading him.<br />
<br />
I am not entirely sure what that means. But it feels so accurate, I'm going with it. Obviously, we feel many other things when reading him. For me, this is predominate.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-72252101816319810152011-01-24T17:55:00.000-08:002011-01-24T17:55:15.477-08:00Close Read of Passage from Pavic's LANDSCAPE PAINTED WITH TEAThe character of Amalia Riznich is introduced as follows:<br />
<br />
"'October has never come as often as this year; every time you turn around, there it is again. At least three times ahead of schedule...'<br />
<br />
Thus whispered Miss Amalia Riznich in German into her Sévres cup. For the past one hundred years, her family had spoken German in autumn, Polish or Russian in winter, Greek in Spring and Serbian only in summer, as befits a family of grain merchants. All past and future seasons thus blended in her consciousness into a single eternal season, resembling itself as hunger does hunger. Spring merged with spring, Russian with Russian, winter with winter, and only summer, which was enclosing Miss Riznich now, broke step with this sequence to take for a moment, but only a moment, its temporary calendar place between spring and autumn, between Greek and German." <br />
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My overriding response to this passage is perplexity. Why does it befit a family of grain merchants to speak a variety of languages over the course of a year? Why would all seasons blending into one another resemble "itself as hunger does hunger"? Why is it that only when speaking Serbian does she "break step with this sequence"?<br />
<br />
There is something magical here, suggesting that the Riznich family traces its origins to the agrarian rhythms of the seasons, and their suborning language to these rhythms. They are grain merchants, and dependent on this agrarian rhythm.<br />
<br />
But why aren't they farmers? Aren't they more agrarian than merchants? Yes, but they are not rich. Pavic needed to create a rich family in order to give this, at times, fairy tale-like story the necessary gravitas. These are ancient people from ancient lines coming together fully only in summer, in the Serbian present, when their own language spills from their lips as they live the most carefree season.<br />
<br />
This book was published in 1990. Could he have been asking for Yugoslavia to stay together? It broke up a couple years after the publication of the <i>Landscape Painted With Tea. </i>By this time, Pavic was an important voice that people heeded. We learn elsewhere that these notebooks are filled with information about Tito, the Yugoslavian Communist strongman.<br />
<br />
I suspect both readings hold up: the magical, fairy tale agrarian one and the political one. I prefer the former because it seems less tethered to a specific time and place. Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-45740115078407443262011-01-23T10:52:00.000-08:002011-01-23T10:52:20.550-08:00easing into traffic<br />
wishing I could stay home<br />
today is my favorite show<br />
but obligations call<br />
and I am still<br />
easing<br />
then cussing<br />
still wishing<br />
and cussing<br />
I might get there on time<br />
for something I hate doingJeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-33501721338798289752011-01-23T10:49:00.000-08:002011-01-23T10:49:46.856-08:00liminal like<br />
the last day of autumn<br />
like the edge of cotton<br />
liminal like<br />
the way<br />
guesses caress<br />
the truth<br />
every edge has<br />
a reason<br />
if we give it<br />
oneJeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-40401466449074894562011-01-16T16:56:00.000-08:002011-01-16T16:56:41.320-08:00Roscoe Mitchell's THE FAR SIDEMy review of jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell's latest release is up at the <a href="http://www.jazzpolice.com/content/view/9415/79/">Jazz Police</a> website. Mitchell is a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-67918135482069503562011-01-13T08:40:00.000-08:002011-01-13T08:40:39.989-08:00Pavic's LAST LOVE IN CONSTANTINOPLE: A Tarot Novel For DivinationFor background on Pavic, see my many entries on him by looking him up in the list of topics to the right or by going to this webpage: <a href="http://www.khazars.com/en/%20-">Milorad Pavic Homepage</a>.<br />
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<br />
One of Pavic's last works, this fascinating book can be read one of two ways: straight through from beginning to end or based on various tarot readings. A pack of tarot cards is provided, and as well as models of the various ways of laying out the cards. Every chapter of the book coincides with one of the cards, so it is possible to read the book in the order demanded by the tarots rather than front to back.<br />
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I read the book twice: once front to back, and once using the tarot method. I suggest that anyone who wants to tackle the book do as I did because things get confusing if you don't have a overall, global sense of the book. This may, in fact, be a criticism of Pavic because it means that the book is difficult, if not impossible, to be read in a wholly reversible manner. By 'reversible' I refer to Pavic's wanting to write novels that were like sculptures or paintings in that there was no linearity to how viewers work their way around the art object. But this is hardly damning.<br />
<br />
The book is about the hostile and friendly interactions between three families, the Opujic's, the Tenecki's, and the Kalopervic's around the turn of the 19th century. The hostile aspect has to do with them fighting on different sides of a war between Serbia (I think), and France. The friendly aspect has to to with intermarriages.<br />
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Each chapter is a fairly self-contained story about members of these families. They are replete with magic: a woman growing out of a tail, a man having three deaths, an ability to hear below ground, and so on.<br />
<br />
Randomness, of course, is at the structural heart of the book. In a way, it takes the place of the traditional plot. With all the magic and the wild characters it adds up to a book that presents us with a world that is in many ways ordered according to our imaginations. Yes, it is true that the cards we are dealt are random and we have no control over them. But we do have control over how we respond to them and interpret them.<br />
<br />
There is a bouyancy and ebullience to this book. It revels in how magical stories can be and, in addition, how magical we can be if we let ourselves.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-28133434657960589092011-01-06T14:47:00.000-08:002011-01-19T03:30:14.397-08:00A Critique of Milorad PavicI am surprised at how many well-informed people remain unfamiliar with Milorad Pavic's brilliant 1984 novel <i>Dictionary of the Khazars</i>, English translation 1988 by Christina Pribcevic-Zoric. The book is about determining the Khazar Polemic, or which of the Abrahamic religions the lost people known as the Khazars ultimately converted to. This provides the platform for Pavic's wildly imaginitivate leaping across centuries, across fact and fantasy, from reality to myth. Charles Fenyvesi actually said that Pavic "writes with such imaginative cultural extension as to make Garcia Marquez seem like James Mitchener."<br />
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The book is a cross-referenced dictionary of events and people divided into three parts: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim. Readers are literally encouraged to read the book in any order they prefer. Pavic wants his novels to be "reversible art," meaning that it does not have a beginning or ending. It is like sculpture or painting: it can be seen from different angles, and the viewer moves about it freely.<br />
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What's more, the book comes in two versions, the male and the female. One crucial paragraph is different in the two. Thereby, Pavic forces the book to remain open, to always invite another reversible reading.<br />
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A very interesting, although very unconvincing, critique of Pavic is developed by Andrew Wachtel in his article "Postmodernism as Nightmare: Milorad Pavic's Literary Demolition of Yugoslavia" in a 1997 issue of <i>The Slavic and East European Journal.</i> Now I am not interested in writing a boring entry that critiques an obscure academic article. Rather, I find myself challenged by the ideas Wachtel brings forth. He should be heard.<br />
<br />
This is his argument in skeletal form:<br />
--He takes his definition of postmodernism from Lyotard, profound skepticism about metanarratives.<br />
--He says that postmodernism developed in stable states in Western Europe and North America where such skepticism would not bring down "the whole house of cards." In Yugoslavia during the 80's it did a lot of harm by being one factor in causing the metanarrative that made Yugoslavia possible become questioned. The result was civil war.<br />
--The Enlightenment inspired meta-narrative proved a necessity for Yugoslavia; it was a luxury for what Wachtel implies are Ivory Tower intellectuals of the West.<br />
--Postmodernism appeared in Yugoslavia just as the country started to disintegrate.<br />
--In Yugoslavia, imaginitave literature was a high-status activity that provided the country with its narratives. In such a cultural milieu, it's not an exaggeration to say that a work of fiction played a role in causing a country to fail.<br />
--Early in Yugoslavia's history, emphasis was placed on the unity of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, not their differences. Intellectuals at the time saw the importance of cultural figures in forming the notion of a Yugoslav and a Yugoslavian state. Conversely, Postmodernism lauds difference over unity.<br />
--By the 60's, ethnic difference was being emphasized more. What kept the country together was supra-national Communism, i.e. ideology, and cultural concerns were secondary.<br />
--A number of novelists began to question and unravel the metanarrative of nationalist unity. This article will look at Pavic's novel.<br />
--The purported structural complexity of Pavic's novel is actually a gimmick. It actually has a conventional plot centering around two questions: What religion did the Khazars convert to in the 9th century and why do representatives of the various religions come together to try to solve the problem?<br />
--When investigating in later centuries, each religion is convinced that their religion was chosen by the Khazars.<br />
--This is Wachtel's crucial point: this is a radically relavitizing vision of history that leaves us with only language games and not unifying narratives.<br />
--Wachtel prefers the novelist Ivo Andric's novel <i>The Bridge over the Drina</i> to Pavic's because it acknowledges the various views of history held by the Muslims, Christians and other groups in Yugoslavia, but then it worked to find, and did find, the truth.<br />
--Pavic's novel was hugely popular and influential in Serbia. It helped to deligitimize any claim for truth, leading to disunity and, Wachtel implies, ultimately a might is right situation.<br />
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What I find most intriguing about this argument is that Wachtel is arguing that various cultures can withstand postmodernist critique better than others. I also really appreciate that he takes literature so seriously.<br />
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I don't know that Pavic would call himself a Postmodernist. Based on an interview in the Review of Contemporary Fiction, he would seem to be a theist! In addition, by placing the truth, ie what the Khazars converted to, in an impenetrable, agrarian past of myth-like and folkloric stories, his book is a lot more like Genesis than it is like Federman's <i>Double or Nothing.</i><br />
<br />
What makes the novel seem so innovative is its structure. It is innovative, but not as much as it might seem. Essentially, it is an episodic novel put together so that readers can encounter the sections in the order they choose. It's Cervante's gone choose your own adventure.<br />
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However, the real reason to read Pavic isn't his structural innovation. It's the magically fertile nature of his mind, that leads to some of the most surprising sentences and passages imaginable. See my March 24 post to see examples of these sentences.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-59397752561408564822010-12-30T12:21:00.000-08:002010-12-30T12:21:03.827-08:00Room 4<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><span> </span>a room is not a</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><span> </span><i>/level/ </i></span><span style="color: black;">room when</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><span> </span>the ceiling caves</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><span> </span>because of a weight</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><span> </span>like indecision</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><span> </span>on the roof</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-13595352929538448242010-12-30T12:16:00.001-08:002010-12-30T12:16:34.178-08:00Ideology 13<span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>code drift</i></span> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>like guesses</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><i>reverberating through a system</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>from skin through synapse</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>through wire through</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>grid</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><i>into venues</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>the guesser never</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"><i><span> </span>could know</i></span></div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2075443389691937979.post-7355341888196547122010-12-30T12:15:00.000-08:002010-12-30T12:15:13.073-08:00Ideology 14<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">not much remarkable</span></span> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">other than bones</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">aching through</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">the afternoon </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">calling us into stupor and longing</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">the wishes climb</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">the walls and every</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">tomcat in the neighborhood</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">cries into the dampness </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07939147413299041270noreply@blogger.com1